Archive for category: Medium (25-50 lbs)

Sweet little girl looks like a lab Doberman mix very lovable very playful very smart great with other dogs and children. You will need to show proof of ownership.

*HELP ME FIND THIS AMAZING DOG’S OWNER!*

We have all come to love her. We are seeing her litter through their adoptions. She’s healthy and will soon be spayed. Now it’s time to do our very best to find her owner. Please share this post everywhere and anywhere you can possibly think of!

I don’t know how long she had been on the streets before I rescued her, at least a few months. But SOMEONE at some point, loved and cared for this dog. I know this, because Noxie was crate trained and knew basic commands. No one trains their dog and then dumps it – especially not one this sweet-natured. If they are alive, I’m sure they are still missing her.

I rescued Noxie from underneath a bridge, near what looked to be a burrow she’d been living in, on Thanksgiving morning. The location is close to the Keystone/Rural exit of Interstate 70, Indianapolis, IN.
When I found her, she was cold, had a severe ear infection in both ears (so stinky) and also a severe skin infection. She also had a belly full of 13 puppies growing inside of her. Yes, that’s right – thirteen.
Noxie had no collar/ID tag.
She was not micro chipped. Her nails were very long. She was in pretty horrible shape. She looked to have been on her own for quite a while. The only indication that she’d had any recent interactions with humans, was the presence of a metal choker chain wrapped around her neck with a frayed leash dangling from it. She had clearly been tethered by someone at some point, with this choker chain, and had chewed through the leash to free herself. She also had a bald spot underneath the choker chain on the back of her neck.

Because her skin looked so bad, I thought she had sarcoptic mange, which is highly contagious (both to dogs and humans). For that reason, I had to keep her isolated from other dogs until I could get her in to see a vet for diagnosis and treatment. The only way I could do this was to keep her crated her in the back of my SUV for a couple of days. That let me keep her safe, fed and warm until I was able to get her vetted and to find a home without other animals and children I could take her into. That’s when I became convinced that she had been trained in the past. It’s hard to imagine that any dog would have been able to handle the confinement that this dog tolerated for the first 48 hours, unless they had been trained to do so. So, I strongly suspected that this dog had a loving, caring owner out there somewhere. And I intended to keep her safe until she could be reunited with that person.

Once a location was secured, she underwent veterinary care and, in a bit of good news, we learned that her skin infection was not sarcoptic mange. We prepared a whelping area for her and awaited the arrival of her pups. Two of her puppies were stillborn, one died of fading puppy syndrome at five weeks. The remaining 10 are strong and healthy. They are 10 weeks old now; vaccinated, dewormed, and at the time of this posting (2/23) all but one have been adopted.

It would be the happiest of endings, if I am able to reunite Noxie with her owner. There were a lot of immediate needs that had to be taken care of first (obviously). But it’s all wrapping up. There are several people who are interested in adopting Noxie. But I have to make certain I have done everything in my power to find her rightful owner before I take the route of rehoming.
So please, please, SHARE! SHARE!

*IMPORTANT*
In the days following her rescue, I did a lot of searching online, to see if there were any posts from her owner. To my surprise, I found a missing dog post with her picture, but it had not been posted by her owner. The individual who created the post referred to Noxie in the post as a “missing stray dog.”

I’ve been doing rescue work for 20 years and, in my experience, no rightful owner of a lost dog describes their lost dog as a “missing stray dog.” At best, someone looking for a missing stray dog is a person who feeds stray animals, not someone caring for a much-loved family pet. So I had deep reservations about contacting that individual. Eventually, that individual contacted me and insisted she owned Noxie. For a variety of reasons, I did not (and do not) believe that to be true. While she appears to have taken Noxie to a vet on one occasion, it also appears that her “relationship” with Noxie did not extend beyond feeding a stray dog in her neighborhood. She conceded that Noxie was not her dog, but insisted that she had formed the intention to adopt Noxie, but she clearly had not done so. I found Noxie without a collar, tag or microchip under a bridge where she was trying her best to shelter from the elements. She was shivering, pregnant, hungry, alone, and sick and appeared to have been on her own for quite a while. There was just no evidence that she had been living in anyone’s home in the recent past.

As far as I can tell, the individual claiming to be Noxie’s owner did not make any attempts to find Noxie’s real owner during the time she had been feeding her. This individual is NOT the owner of this dog. (Sadly, I was forced to give this same explanation once already to the police after she filed a false report against me, accusing me of having stolen Noxie from her.) Setting aside the question whether this person was ever actually Noxie’s rightful owner (she wasn’t), I am just not comfortable placing Noxie with anyone who would leave a dog alone outside in the winter.

I am hopeful that Noxie’s true and rightful owner is out there somewhere, let’s find them!!❤️

Her real owner will not refer to her as a “stray dog.” Anyone who has ever loved a dog knows that her real owner will likely have a history of happy photographs, and maybe even social media videos of the tricks that they taught her how to do, that sort of thing. If there is someone out there who loves and misses this dog, I want to find them!!

Thank you SO much, to everyone who has helped in this project. And thanks in advance, to anyone kind enough to share this post.
Michael O’Brien
818-416-6550